Professional Wildlife Removal and Animal Pest Control Serving Florida and the whole USA

Mouse Removal and Control

Effective and permanent mouse control comes down to one single thing - find out how the mice are getting in to your house, and seal those holes shut! That's it. Nothing else will solve the problem. No poisons, no repellents, no gimmicks. You've just got to find out
how the mice are getting inside. Your house has holes in it - gaps near the foundation, areas where pipes enter, gaps in the fascia, eave gaps at roof lines, vents that aren't screened, etc. Seal them shut with steel screen! Once you find and seal all the entry holes,
yeah a couple of mice are going to be stuck inside the house, but then they just have to be trapped in snap traps and removed. Cleaning up mouse feces and urine afterward is often a good idea.

How To Get A Mouse Out Of The House
Mickey Mouse is cute. The mouse in your house is not, especially when you start finding droppings everywhere. Cute or not, the simple fact is that a mouse has no business living in your house. Whether you live in the country or the city, when the weather turns cold mice want a comfortable place for the winter. They want to live in your house and make nests, raising their babies there, too. Mice multiply at an enormous rate. At less than three months old, females can begin to reproduce. A normal litter is ten to twelve pups. She can get pregnant again while still nursing that litter; after weaning the first litter in three weeks’ time, she can have another ten or more babies. This is not what you want in your house.

What Attracts Mice To Your Residence?
To answer this question you should think about what a mouse really wants: Safety, food, warmth, a place to have young ones. She will search as far as her short legs will carry her to find those things. If your house is in her path, it is fair game.

What Is The Best Way To Keep Mice Out Of The House?
The single most important way to keep mice out of your house is to eliminate all the things a mouse wants. Keep your house clean of left-over food, of cracker crumbs and pet food in bowls. Open candy dishes are an invitation. Bowls of fruit make tasty snacks for a starving mouse. Keep any debris outside away from your house. The second most important precaution is to secure any and all possible openings into your house from the outside. Often these can be found around pipes, wiring and under eaves. A hole of one or two inches in diameter is a portal to any mouse.

Yikes! You Saw A Mouse Disappear Under Your Refrigerator-Now What?
You had no idea that you had a mouse in the house. One quiet evening you sit in your kitchen and you see a mouse crossing the floor. You scream-or not, and check out this intruder who quickly disappeared under your refrigerator. The only thing on your mind is to get it out and get it out now. You don’t want to go to bed leaving this mouse to have full access to your home. It needs to leave for reasons of health and sanitation, if nothing else.

How Do You Get The Mouse Out?
You may be tempted to guide it outside via a trail of cheese and crackers leading right out the door. Logic kicks in and you wonder how it got into your house in the first place. Guiding it outside will do nothing but bring it back inside later. A mousetrap may be the thing for now.

Which Bait Will Work Best In A Mousetrap?
Among the endless suggestions of bait, the one concoction that has been tried and proven true is regular peanut butter mixed with bird seed all rolled into a ball. Place the ball onto the trap and then set the trap close to where you saw the mouse. Dim the lights and wait quietly. Your mouse will smell the offering. It will be irresistible. In a short time, you will hear the problem-solving snap of the trap.

What Is Involved In Getting Rid Of This Pest?
A mouse trap may be the best immediate solution for getting rid of a mouse in your house. However, to keep future problems at bay, you may want to place some mouse poison at strategic places where children and other pets cannot be exposed to it but mice will easily reach it. Poisoning may not be the most desirable way to get rid of a mouse, but it is an almost sure way. You don’t always see them since they are by nature shy, lightening quick and nocturnal. This means you may have mice in your house and not know it, yet. Neither mouse traps nor poison is expensive but both will help ease your mind.

Mouse info: The typical house mouse weighs less than an ounce. It can fit in a crack
of only a quarter inch. They can and do get everywhere. If your house has food and has any small openings,
eventually mice will find their way in. House mice eat many types of food but prefer seeds and grain. They
do not hesitate to sample new foods, sampling many kinds of items in their
environment. A single mouse can't eat a whole lot, but because of their habit of nibbling on many foods, discarding
partially eaten items, and defecating everywhere, mice destroy considerably more food than they consume. Mice
are primarily nocturnal, they can dig, they chew like all rodents do, and they can produce a tremendous
number of offspring. Mice are very rare throughout most parts of Florida. Most of the "mouse calls" we get are
actually sightings of small young Roof Rats.

The American House Mouse - Biology and Information

House mice are actually not native to the United States but come from Asia, and have taken the world by storm. Next to humans they have highest single species population in the world. The house mouse in science terms is called Mus Musculus which in Latin means musky odor. These mammals are closely related to the human physiology and are used in scientific research. They are also one of most common nuisances on earth.

Biology
The common house mouse is a small little creature that lives near humans and feeds off of whatever is left around. They are only about six inches long and their color is dependent on where the live. If they live inside they tend to be darker, and outside they will be lighter in color. The mouse will eat up to fifteen times a day, and is also why they will live within fifty feet of their food source. Mice have excellent hearing, vision, smelling, and taste, along with being sensitive to the touch. They usually feed off of grains, but will nibble on anything that is left out. The mouse is an excellent climber, can jump straight up thirteen feet, and can slip through the tiniest of holes.

Life Cycle and Reproduction
House mice only live up to about one year in the wild but their cycle is fast paced. They are able to have babies within two months of birth and can have litters up to fifteen times in one year. Their litters can range from five to twelve babies, and the mother can ovulate every other day. This can mean up to one hundred fifty babies in one year and with a two month cycle before birthing it is easy to see how mice have populated the earth so quickly.
The mothers have a gestation period of three weeks and can get pregnant immediately after giving birth. Babies will stay with the mother for a short time, but since nests are normally made of family members they will not venture to far especially if the food is plentiful. The house mouse will eat their feces for nutrition if there is no other food available. Gender is usually not detectable at a young age but as they get older will display the gender tendencies.

Habitat
The common house mouse builds their nests near their food source which is usually within a fifty foot perimeter. These mammals are nocturnal but can be active during the day depending on their environment. The mice need little or no water but can eat up to eight pounds of food in one day. The average mouse will drop quite a bit of feces a day which can create a health hazard within a home. They make their nests up with soft items such as cloth and things that they can shred and will make their home wherever it is convenient usually a wall opening or in the attic. House mice are very fast runners and can scurry along at eight miles an hour.

Common Diseases These Animals Can Spread
Although the house mouse is not as dangerous as the rat, they still do pose a health risk to humans by carrying various bacteria and viruses such as murine typhus, salmonella, tularemia and rickettsial pox. It is said that even the littlest amount of urine from a mouse can trigger allergies. They spread their diseases by contamination of the water and food left by the mouse droppings.

Common Nuisance Complaints
Because the mice need to chew, they will gnaw on plastics, paper, woods, wires, and clothing especially to get to food. This can cause property damage and there have been many fires that were associated with wires being eaten through by mice. The house mouse will also contaminate food which will need to be discarded. They will eat into cereal boxes, chew through cupboards, and make homes wherever there is an opening wide enough to get into.